205
submitted 11 months ago by Salamendacious@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

Wendy’s and McDonald’s have emerged victorious from a lawsuit that accused the fast food chains of false advertising.

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought against the two companies accusing them of selling smaller hamburgers than advertised and alleging the food didn’t look as appetizing in person as pictured on their websites.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works 121 points 11 months ago

Only because 'everyone does it'

"US District Judge Hector Gonzalez ruled that Wendy’s and McDonald’s food images “are no different than other companies’ use of visually appealing images to foster positive associations with their products.”

Italics mine

[-] Salamendacious@lemmy.world 57 points 11 months ago

Ahh yes the rarely used "jump off a bridge reversal" defense. If everyone jumped off a bridge would you do it too? Of course!

[-] zerofk@lemm.ee 9 points 11 months ago

At the very least I’d start checking for a monster chasing them off the bridge.

[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 40 points 11 months ago

"Systemic problems are OK!"

[-] quindraco@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago

If you replace your underscores with asterisks, emphasis/italics should work as intended.

[-] Cheradenine@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

I am posting this from Voyager, does it not look correct? I did not underscore anything and added the italics for his quote.

[-] scottywh@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Nothing in your comment is italicized in Sync.

Does this line show up in italics for you?

[-] scottywh@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago
load more comments (6 replies)
[-] bassomitron@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

It looks fine on Boost for Lemmy

[-] Pips@lemmy.film 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Not really, that's a minor part of the opinion. The more important part is they tell you how much food you're going to get of what kind and then they give you that food. I don't think anyone would be able to win a case on "my burger didn't look like the burger in the ad" because every burger looks a little different. Lots of things that are the same don't look the same and let's not suddenly pretend we get McDonalds for the appearance. They'd win false advertising if, say, a quarter pounder was only 2 oz.

[-] Cryophilia@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Lots of things that are the same don’t look the same

...and that's false advertising, that's the point of the lawsuit.

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] Beldarofremulak@lemmy.world 103 points 11 months ago

Imagine seeing a car commercial, wanting the car, then going into a dealership and seeing the exact same car on the floor. You buy it and get some shitty blursed version and they are all "that's our display only model". That's probably different somehow as long as you get the right judge.

[-] FlowVoid@midwest.social 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Imagine a coffee shop ad with a beautiful example of latte art, but when you get your latte you are horrified to find just plain foam. Unless the ad specifically mentioned latte art, I doubt you'd have grounds for a lawsuit.

As for your example, I'm finding it hard to imagine buying a car before getting inside it. A few dealers offer a pre-order option, but you can always back out of the sale once you see the car.

[-] remotelove@lemmy.ca 19 points 11 months ago

grounds for a lawsuit

There is a joke in there somewhere. ;)

[-] drbluefall@toast.ooo 3 points 11 months ago

I'm sure you just gotta let it brew for a while. Then the joke will pour right over.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] tacosanonymous@lemm.ee 44 points 11 months ago

America proves once again that we will allow just about anything if it makes corpos money.

[-] ComradeChairmanKGB@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 11 months ago

Fuckin gonk Corpos

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Shazbot@lemmy.world 30 points 11 months ago

The advertising angle is likely what sank their case. Proving the food does not meet a technical specification, like not having a quarter pound of beef in a fully cooked patty, is easier to prove. But advertising has always been hyperbole.

[-] 2ncs@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

A very important aspect that I think people overlook is that they use similar/same marketing photos of the food on their menu. That's not advertising, maybe that's what they will argue. If I look at a menu and they have a picture of the food, I'm going to expect I get what I see (within a margin) vs when I see an advertisement I expect it to be a bit hyperbolic.

[-] irmoz@reddthat.com 2 points 11 months ago

You could argue that menus are just in-store advertising

[-] 2ncs@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

A lot of things in stores have to add disclaimers about what is on the cover of the box vs what's on the inside. I don't see how fast food gets a pass on that. Or why people are just okay with it too.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] thisisnotgoingwell@programming.dev 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah, that might be a good case. Isn't the weight advertised when it's frozen/before it's cooked? How can they call it a quarter pounder if half of it's weight is reduced before it's served to you?

[-] neptune@dmv.social 2 points 11 months ago

Because that's how food works. You buy a 1lb steak at the butcher and you see him put it on the scale. You don't weight it when it comes off the grill. You might have added butter to it, and lost some weight to dripping and evaporation. It's sort of disengenuous, if you have ever cooked, to not understand that they don't weight cooked patties and throw out the ones that lost too much weight or whatever.

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 28 points 11 months ago

Hurray, they can keep showing us inedible objets d'art in food adverts!

[-] alienanimals@lemmy.world 25 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The law favors corporate giants rather than real people? How surprising. Fuck McDonalds and Wendys

[-] Salamendacious@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

I feel a little guilty because while I rarely eat fast food anymore Wendy's is my favorite

load more comments (6 replies)
[-] Adalast@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Now, just to add more shit to that sandwich, remember what you said when you read that the Supreme Court has ruled several times that police officers ONLY duty is to uphold the law, and they have no duty or obligation to protect the citizens they police.

[-] Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 21 points 11 months ago

Did anyone really believe the corporate judge would do any differently?

[-] Salamendacious@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago

Absolutely not. I remember when this was filled and I thought, "well this will be dismissed soon"

[-] randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 11 months ago

"This is so backwards" one would think and then one realizes that all advertising is deception.

The judge tacitly acknowledges this truth.

[-] Pips@lemmy.film 6 points 11 months ago

I dunno, seems like the judge is explicitly acknowledging it.

[-] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 15 points 11 months ago

Just, uh, stop giving these shitty companies your money and uh, problem solved!

[-] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

Ah yes, if only we did this one easy thing! It so easy!

If it was that easy/simple they would be out of business already. Unfortunately reality doesn't always line up with these "simple" solutions, as evidence by.... reality.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] LilB0kChoy@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago

No. I'm, I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way.

[-] charonn0@startrek.website 11 points 11 months ago

The technical term is "puffery", which the FTC defines as "exaggerations reasonably to be expected of a seller as to the degree of quality of his product, the truth or falsity of which cannot be precisely determined."

[-] Salamendacious@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

I just recently became aware of that term. Thanks!

[-] Vlyn@lemmy.zip 7 points 11 months ago

I'm honestly confused. Didn't they show off before that they use the actual ingredients when doing photoshoots? Like no plastic or anything, just making the burger + good lighting, otherwise it's false advertising?

Of course if you then stick that burger into a tight squished wrapper it won't look the same, compared to serving it on a plate and setting it up nicely.

[-] Salamendacious@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I think you're right I think some of the complaints was the advertisements show more ingredients in the sandwich so they appear larger than they actually are.

Non food items are allowed in commercials but not for the advertised product. The example I heard was Cheerios can use white glue as the milk in a cereal bowl because Cheerios don't sell milk. I need to look this stuff up more though.

[-] hobovision@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I think one of the things the plaintiff is arguing, which I think is valid, is that the food is not prepared the same way even if the ingredients are the same. The example they use is that the burger patty is browned on the outside but not cooked through, so appears to be a much bigger portion of meat than is actually if the burger. It's similar to the bait and switch scam of putting all the filling at the top, making it appear the sandwich or burrito is filled with that quantity, but then you open it up and it's mostly empty.

I think the argument that "we said the exact weight so it's fine" is BS because few people intuitively understand how much ounces of meat or how many grams a sandwich is, but they can intuitively understand a picture of food.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
205 points (95.6% liked)

News

22877 readers
2767 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS